


Out of the Wilderness

by turnofthesentry



Category: DCU - Comicverse, The Flash (Comic)
Genre: Drugs, Family, Gen, Introspection, POV Third Person, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnofthesentry/pseuds/turnofthesentry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Family" seems like a dirty word to most of them, anyway, no need to drag the group through the mud with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Wilderness

If the Rogues were anything like a family, Evan McCulloch would probably agree only under the condition that "mob" was added in front of it. But he's a mercenary -- had been one since he was a kid, still is one now. Working alone is normal, and being alone is easy. "Family" seems like a dirty word to most of them, anyway, no need to drag the group through the mud with it. 

Family leaves you on the doorstep and keeps you waiting and when you catch up to it it escapes forever, broken and bloody; _that's_ what family was. So what are the Rogues? Hell if McCulloch knows. 

It's never weird to Evan, but he figures he's not the one who had his treehouse intruded upon. He wonders, sometimes, if to the rest of them it's weird in those secret ways they never speak of and maybe deny; he has no real way of knowing, isn't the type to ask. But it shouldn't matter, anyway. Scudder's dead, and the dead don't take it all with them. No, it just gets recycled. 

The guy's dead, and it's not like this is the first Flash, either. If anyone has a problem with him they'd better get over it. 

They're lucky to have him in the group at all. Most everything they do he's been doing something like it since he was but a wee lad, which is more than most super-villain sadsacks can cite for experience; even better in a group, because even when you split the take a pay-off is always bigger with a group. Get the money, get the coke (the soda and the powder, and sometimes he mixed the two when Cold was around so he couldn't be caught doing lines) then disappear for the night -- it's a way to live. They all have one, and maybe that's why they all work together so well. They have their own reasons to fight and rob and sometimes murder and they defend that about each other, even if Evan's reasons aren't for repentance or revenge or anything much grander than the grandeur itself, the dosh and adrenaline. 

But even all that's a bit sentimental for him to like thinking about. Shite, Cold couldn't have been that surprised when he saw that cocaine dusted mirror, but what he couldn't get was that Evan felt sharper _for_ the highs, the confidence, the sense of indestructibility, everything that's just _living_ the Rogues are without thinking about what it means, what it's called, those uncomfortable sentimentalities and every _other_ thought that makes looking in the mirror feel like something might eat him the moment when he turns his eyes away from the slick reflection. He needs a looking glass of his _own_ design. 

It's a small cowardice, and a forgivable one. At least, he's forgiven himself.


End file.
